Netflix Mysteriously Cancels Popular Drama Series After Just One Season

Netflix has canceled the sci-fi mystery series 1899 after just one season. Unlike other canceled Netflix shows, 1899 did very well with viewers after its Nov. 17 debut, making the streaming platform’s move to cancel is particularly baffling. The series was created by Jantjee Friese and Baran bo Odar, the couple behind Netflix’s first German-language original, Dark. 

Emily Beecham (Into the Badlands) led an international cast in 1899, which centers on a group of European emigrants traveling from the U.K. to New York City on a steamship. On the journey, they encounter another migrant ship, which plays a central role in the show’s mystery. Aneurin Barnard, Andreas Pietschmann, Miguel Bernardeau, Mathilde Aollivier, Jonas Bloquet, Rosalie Craig, and Maciej Musial also star. The series was a truly international production, with characters speaking English, Spanish, French, German, Polish, Danish, Portuguese, and Cantonese throughout.

On Monday, bo Odar and Friese revealed that they had plans for two more seasons, but Netflix chose not to renew the series. “That’s life,” they wrote. “We know this will disappoint millions of fans out there. But we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts that you were a part of this wonderful adventure. We love you. Never forget.”

A potential silver lining is that fans aren’t giving up hope for the future of the show. Thousands of fans have signed an online petition to save the series, which spent several weeks in the streaming Top 10. The Change.org petition, titled “Renew 1899 on Netflix,” has garnered more than 20,000 signatures in less than 20 hours.

Netflix’s decision to cancel 1899 so soon is surprising since the show found an audience. Critics loved it, and it was included on multiple “best of” lists at the end of the year. It climbed to number two on Netflix’s Top 10 TV English titles just three days after its release, with 79.27 million hours viewed.

Friese and bo Odar previously had success on Netflix with Dark, a three-season sci-fi thriller about a fictional village where characters encounter a sinister time-travel conspiracy. Dark ended with 26 episodes, released between 2017 and 2020. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Friese said there were some similarities between the two shows, although no time travel was involved in 1899.

“There is a lot in the DNA that is kind of close to Dark in terms of the puzzle and needing an engaged active audience,” Friese told the magazine in September. “But there are also things that are quite different in terms of atmosphere and tonality, but also pacing and more action-y stuff happening. So it is truly a beast of its own, but shares a lot of the same maybe mechanisms as Dark does. Hopefully, it feels like something really fresh and new, while still [being] exactly what Dark fans would like to watch.”